Maybe Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have given up on trying to convince the world that they always enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth II, even after they suggested on global TV that she ran an archaic, 1,000-year-old institution that harbored racist family members.
If the Montecito-based Duke and Duchess of Sussex haven’t let go of such notions, the ever critical British media is around to remind them otherwise.
This week, journalist and royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith revealed that Harry “blew” his relationship with his special relationship grandmother by being “rude” and demanding in the run-up to his May 2018 royal wedding, the Daily Mail reported. Meanwhile, the queen was initially charmed by Meghan’s intelligence and natural ease in public, but she also became “very worried” that the American former TV actor was becoming increasingly “bossy,” Bedell Smith also wrote this week on her Royals Extra Substack.
TOPSHOT – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II looks on during the wedding ceremony of Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and US actress Meghan Markle in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in Windsor, on May 19, 2018. (Photo by Jonathan Brady / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read JONATHAN BRADY/AFP via Getty Images)
Moreover, people in the queen’s inner circle, notably her first cousin, Lady Elizabeth Anson, began to wonder if the “Suits” actress was really “in love” with Harry, or had “engineered” the relationship, according to Bedell Smith. The queen also was growing increasingly concerned about apparent tensions between Harry and his older brother, Prince William.
For her Substack, Bedell Smith recounted her conversations with Anson, a close personal friend who was known as one of the U.K.’s party planners before she died five years ago at age 79.
Anson told Bedell Smith that Meghan appeared “natural, intelligent, and thoughtful” after she became engaged to Harry in 2017. But as the wedding approached, Meghan’s alleged bossiness put the queen off and “the jury is out on whether she likes Meghan,” Anson said.
In Anson’s view, “Harry is besotted and weak about women. We hope but don’t quite think she is in love.” According to Bedell Smith, Anson also said: “It’s worrying that so many people are questioning whether Meghan is right for Harry. The problem, bless his heart, is that Harry is neither bright nor strong, and she is both.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 14: Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex leave Westminster Hall, London after the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was brought to the hall to lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday on September 14, 2022 in London, England. Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin is taken in procession on a Gun Carriage of The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall where she will lay in state until the early morning of her funeral. Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on September 8, 2022, and is succeeded by her eldest son, King Charles III. (Photo Danny Lawson – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
In February 2018, three months before the big day, Anson told Bedell Smith that Harry wrote her and said his grandmother was pleased with the way that wedding preparations were coming along.
Anson certainly knew about putting on big events, having organized A-list parties for Margaret Thatcher, Mick Jagger, Tom Cruise and former President Bill Clinton. She also planned Sting’s 1992 wedding to Trudie Styler and a special party for royal guests attending William’s 2011 wedding to Kate Middleton.
But Anson heard something different from the queen herself about preparations for the latest royal wedding. For one thing, the queen was “dismayed” that Harry had barreled ahead and asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to perform the wedding service in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle without first requesting permission from the church official posted at Windsor Castle.
Given that the queen also served as the head of the Church of England, Harry’s breach of protocol left her “really upset.”
“I was shocked when the queen told me this, how she was so saddened,” Anson told Bedell. “I had no idea about the conversation, that he was rude to her for ten minutes.”
The queen also wanted details about Meghan’s wedding dress, presumably needing to be assured that it would be appropriate for a globally televised royal wedding. Anson said: “(Harry and Meghan) had tea with her. … She was trying to find out about the wedding dress, and Meghan wouldn’t tell her,”
Towards the end of April 2018, the queen and her grandson had “patched things up” but the queen was concerned about whether Meghan was helping her father, Thomas Markle, prepare to come to the wedding. Anson had heard that Thomas Markle was “frightened to come” because of Meghan “being bossy,” while “the wedge” between Harry and William had become “really bad.”
History has since shown that Thomas Markle, a former Hollywood lightening designer living in Mexico, needed to be hospitalized for a heart condition in the days leading to the wedding. The hapless Markle had ignited a scandal by cooperating with a paparazzo, who wanted to stage photos of him preparing to travel to England to walk his beloved daughter down the aisle.
Meanwhile, William and Harry’s once-close bond had began to break over William’s wariness around Meghan and the growing conflicts between Kate and Harry’s bride. Anson said the queen told her that “Meghan and William and Kate were not working well together,” adding that it was mostly, “the two girls who didn’t get on.”
Despite the queen’s apparent reservations about Harry’s choice of bride, she went out of her way to welcome her into the royal family, casting aside a number of royal conventions to do so, Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden also reported.
The queen gave Meghan the Duchess of Sussex title, and invited her granddaughter-in-law to accompany her on a solo visit to an official event in Chester just weeks after the royal wedding, prompting Meghan to tell Oprah Winfrey in her famous 2021 interview: “The queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me.”
But the fact that Meghan quit royal duties two years later, but continued to use her royal connections to bolster a career in the United States as a media mogul and lifestyle influencer shows “how astute the queen was to have private reservations about her,” Eden said.
